SAHA Conversations

A SAHA Conversation with Dr Paul Malgrati

Who was Robert Burns? Join us on a SAHA Conversation with Dr Paul Malgrati and learn more about Scotland’s National Bard and the celebration of his life and works that takes place on his birthday, January 25h. Dr Paul Malgrati is a scholar and poet from France, specialist of modern Scottish literature at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI). Paul completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews as well as a two-year post-doctoral contract at the University of Glasgow. His award-winning research led to the publication of his first monograph, Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics. The Bard of Contention. 1914-2014 (EUP, 2023), which explores Burns’s legacy in Scottish national culture, from Victorian unionism to contemporary nationalism. Between 2018 and 2023, Paul has also completed three research projects: ‘Joe Corrie (1894-1968): Miner, Playwright, Activist’ (St Andrews, PI, 2018-19); ‘The Burns Supper in History and Today’ (Glasgow, RA, 2020-22) and ‘The Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation: Creating Digital Futures & Networks’ (Glasgow. RA, 2021-23). Alongside scholarship, Paul is also known as a poet and translator. In 2020, his poetic work was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize, which led to the publication Poèmes Écossais (Blue Diode Press, 2022): the first collection of poetry in the Scots language by a non-native anglophone. Such Franco-Scottish interests were also developed in Paul’s French translation of Robert Crawford’s Curriculum Violette, published in bilingual edition by Molecular Press in 2021. That same year, Paul also joined the team of Revue Écossaise, the first printed, Francophone magazine about Scotland (which has since developed into a podcast). The episode is also available on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts. If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share it on your favourite social media platform. You can tag SAHA on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn and Facebook (Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance).

A SAHA Conversation with Lisa Maria Feige

What does whisky mean to you? Join us on a SAHA conversation with Lisa Maria Feige on whisky, literature, poetry and  representations of Scottishness in the history of Scotland’s national drink Lisa is a PhD Student at the University of Regensburg, the working title of her dissertation is "Freedom an' Whisky gang thegither? Representations of Scottishness in the History of Scotland's National Drink". The episode is also available on Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts. If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share it on your favourite social media platform. You can tag SAHA on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/saha_voice/] (@SAHA_voice [https://www.instagram.com/saha_voice/]), Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/sahavoice.bsky.social] (@sahavoice.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/sahavoice.bsky.social]) LinkedIn and Facebook (Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance)

A SAHA Conversation with Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland

To mark International Open Access Week, we had the pleasure of having a SAHA Conversation with Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Associate Head of BMus with a specialism in Historical Musicology at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and a member of the Editorial Board of the Scottish Universities Press (SUP). Scottish Universities Press (SUP) is a fully open access publishing press coordinated by the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL) and managed by 20 member libraries on a not-for-profit basis. The SUP model provides a clear and cost-effective route for researchers to make their work freely available to a global audience, extending the impact of research across society and meeting the requirements of funders. SUP delivers a full-service publishing experience with open communication and transparent processes from peer review through to promotion. SUP is community-led and responsive to the needs of the academic community that it serves. You can read more about SUP on their website sup.ac.uk and on the guest blog written by Dominique Walker (available here). Visit rcs.ac.uk from more information on The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland   This episode was recorded on October 9th, 2025, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

A SAHA Conversation with Dr Emily Doolittle

Happy World Music Day! To mark World Music Day, we had the pleasure of having a SAHA Conversation with Dr Emily Doolittle, a composer, zoomusicologist, and Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Canadian-born, Scotland-based composer Dr Doolittle grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia and was educated at Dalhousie University, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, Indiana University and Princeton University. From 2008-2015 she was Assistant/Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Cornish College of the Arts. She is currently an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Dr Doolittle was awarded a 2016 Opera America Discovery Grant [http://operaamerica.org/content/about/pressroom/2016/04202016.aspx], as well as funding from the Hinrichsen Foundation [http://www.hinrichsenfoundation.org.uk/] and the Canada Council of the Arts, for the development of her chamber opera Jan Tait and the Bear, which was premiered by Ensemble Thing [http://www.ensemblething.com/], with Alan McHugh, Catherine Backhouse [http://catherinebackhouse.co.uk/], and Brian McBride, conducted by Tom Butler and directed by Stasi Schaeffer [http://www.stasischaeffer.com/], at the Centre for Contemporary Arts [http://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme] in Glasgow. Jan Tait and the Bear received further funding from Creative Scotland, the Hope Scott Foundation, and an RCS Athenaeum Award for performance in the Made in Scotland Showcase at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Doolittle is currently collaborating with Greenlight Creative to create an animated video of Jan Tait and the Bear with funding from an RCS Knowledge Exchange grant. In this episode, Dr Doolittle will help us understand the term “zoomusicology”, Jan Tait and the Bear (a 15th-century folktale from the Shetlandic Isle of Fetlar) and so much more.

A SAHA Conversation with Professor Mario I. Aguilar - a special episode on the Conclave

Welcome to a new episode of SAHA Conversations, a podcast by the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA). In this episode, we will be in conversation with Professor Mario I. Aguilar, Chair of Religion and Politics and  the current director and a founding director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics at the University of St Andrews, to talk about the Conclave Professor Aguilar completed a biography of Pope Francis (Pope Francis: His Life and Thought, 2014) that connects with many of his works on the history of the Church in Latin America and Latin American theologies previously published, including: A Social History of the Catholic Church in Chile (9 volumes, 2004–), The History and Politics of Latin American Theology (3 volumes, 2007-2008),  Cardenal Raúl Silva Henríquez: presencia en la vida de Chile 1907-1999 (2004), and Current Issues on Theology and Religion in Latin America and Africa (2002). His research also includes what is considered to be the largest study of its kind, a ten-year research project conducted between 2007 and 2017 on religion and politics in Tibet. Professor Aguilar is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS, 2013), Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (FRAS, 2012), Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA, 2011), Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (FRAI, 1996) and a member of the UNESCO commission of Scotland.   This episode was recorded on May 7th.